Peru for food lovers: let meals shape the trip

Three cuisines, in an order that spares your appetite

The order also follows the altitude: you start at sea level, spend three nights in Arequipa (about 2,335 m), then sleep first in the Sacred Valley, lower than Cusco. At altitude, the first meals should be light. See altitude.

One meal a day that teaches you something

The best way to spoil a food lover’s trip is to have three big meals a day, one after another. This programme plans one main meal a day, the one that teaches you something, and simple meals the rest of the time:

• In the morning: a juice pressed at the market, a pan con chicharrón in Lima.
• At midday: the main meal. In Lima, ceviche is eaten at midday; in Arequipa, the picantería serves from midday to 15:00; in the Andes, the midday menú is the simplest and cheapest meal.
• In the evening: something light, especially at altitude.

Two days have no food programme: Pachacámac (day 5) and Santa Catalina (the morning of day 7). They let your appetite come back.

Day by day

Days 1 to 5: Lima

• Day 2. A Surquillo market, with someone who explains the produce or with our pointers: market No. 1, partly reopened, or market No. 2, covered, a kilometre away (see Surquillo); then a ceviche at midday, in a cevichería, because raw fish is eaten fresh. In the evening, Barranco. See Lima’s markets.
• Day 3. The historic centre, then a chifa in the Barrio Chino, on Calle Capón: Chinese-Peruvian cooking, born of the Chinese immigrants who arrived from 1849. In the afternoon, the central market.
• Day 4. The Museo Larco, whose ceramics also depict the plants grown by ancient societies; lunch in a taberna in Pueblo Libre. In the evening, anticuchos, beef heart skewers, a dish of Afro-Peruvian origin.
• Day 5. Pachacámac, with no food programme. In the evening, a Nikkei restaurant, the cuisine born of Japanese immigration.

Days 6 to 8: Arequipa and its picanterías

Originally places selling chicha de guiñapo, made from black corn, the picanterías have been serving meals since the 19th century; the Arequipa picantería has been cultural heritage of the Nation since 2014. Lunch, between midday and 15:00, begins with a hearty soup, different on each day of the week. On day 7, the soup of the day; on day 8, rocoto relleno, very hot even with the seeds removed, and ocopa, made with peanuts and huacatay. For dessert, queso helado, a cinnamon ice cream. See the picanterías.

Days 9 to 12: Andean produce

• Day 10. Pisac market, larger on certain days according to published descriptions; the circles of terraces at Moray; the Maras salt pans, hundreds of pools worked by families from the community.
• Day 11. Chinchero, on the plateau: weaving, crops, the church built on Inca foundations; then Ollantaytambo.
• Day 12. Cusco: San Pedro market, its juices, its soups, its Andean breads and cheeses; a neighbourhood menú at midday. See eating in Cusco.

Allergies, diets, caution

• Allergies: several sauces contain peanuts or nuts (ocopa, ají de gallina). Say so in writing before a class or a tasting, naming the specific food; no kitchen can guarantee the absence of traces. See allergies and health.
• Vegetarian: always ask whether a meat stock goes into the soup or the sauce.
• Caution: dishes cooked in front of you, fruit you peel, bottled or treated water. See eating out.

Budget: meals, tastings, transport separately

Variant in seven days

Variant in twenty-one days

After day 12, two paths: one adds Machu Picchu and the cooking of the north, the other the Amazon.

See the cooking of the north and Tarapoto’s cacao and coffee.